I also have trouble with the new site. Three columns is a bit much, and the photos and videos are tiny. Why can't people produce websites with fonts large enough to read without having to use the zoom function.
 
I notice via Facebook that there's a bit of a push going to name the park after Paul Quarrington...
 
Anybody know what this will be?

This is on the South/East corner at Lakeshore and Lower Sherbourne.

I have passed by this a few times in the last week and have been wondering what they are building. It is part of the "New Blue Edge" project but looks like an airplanes vertical stabilizer.

Apologies for the crummy cell-cam pic.

IMG00129-20100428-1250.jpg
 
Noticed from the GO Train this morning that trees have gone in at Sugar Beach.
They seem to be nice large specimens too... think Bloor St. :)
 
Sweet changes on the waterfront: http://www.nationalpost.com/news/canada/toronto/story.html?id=2992100
The Andean, a bulk freighter ship with a teal-green hull, arrived in Toronto harbour this week from El Salvador, carrying a cargo of about 20,000 tonnes of raw sugar extracted from cane. The ship tied up at the Redpath Sugar refinery wharf. Clam scoops attached to cables on two big cranes have all week lifted sugar out of the hold and into the Raw Sugar Shed; you can see brown crumbs trickling out from between the great shovels' teeth.

This ship, longer than a football field, is a majestic sight, and the dramatic change coming to Toronto's waterfront is about to make sugar-ship watching a whole lot more pleasant. Alongside the ship, on a former parking lot, this week dozens of workers with Eastern Construction are busy planting 57 trees -- Golden weeping willows, white pines and Freeman maples -- and laying dark granite cobblestones to form a mosaic depicting maple leafs, to complete a park they are calling Canada's Sugar Beach.

The years of thumb-sucking and report-writing are over. Toronto's waterfront is suddenly changing at a remarkable clip: By the end of the fall, the stretch of Queens Quay running east of Jarvis Street to Sherbourne Street will boast two new parks, one new head office and, under construction, one new college campus and one Moshe Safdie residential building. I spent a couple of days in the area this week marvelling at the transformation. It is an exciting time at the water's edge.

James Roche, a senior project manager with Waterfront Toronto, led me this week on a tour of Sugar Beach and Sherbourne Park.

We started at Sugar Beach, and first stood on a house-sized boulder which the designers cut in slices at a quarry north of Montreal, ( "like a big ham," he says) and then shipped here to glue it back together. An initial reaction might be, "What, we don't have any rocks in Ontario?" but Mr. Roche insists, "It was a one of a kind rock outcrop that the designer saw."

We then snuck under the yellow "caution" tape and walked east along the lake's edge, skirting the south end of two eight-storey green glass boxes linked by a central atrium, a $130-million building that the City of Toronto is building to lease to Corus Entertainment.

Earlier I had chatted with a Corus executive in one of the construction trailers by the site. The bulk of Corus employees are moving from Liberty Village. I have trouble imagining a more radical change than this: From the groovy Victorian industrial setting to this gleaming modernism by the lake. But the Corus executive said her 1,200 employees are looking forward to their arrival over the next few months.

"The biggest change is that the whole floor will be open-concept," she said. "Even the president's office. We figured, with such spectacular views, why give them only to a few people? So that will take a little adjustment, but it will be fantastic."

Across from the new Corus building, Mike Pecar is wondering about the future of The Dock Shoppe, at 162 Queens Quay East. For 25 years this sprawling ships chandler has sold things boaters need, such as line, cleats, blocks, life jackets and boating shoes. But his lease expires at year's end and he does not know where he will go.

Looking across to the Corus building, he notes, "there is no retail component on the main floor."

Mr. Pecar makes a valid point: As a master builder, Waterfront Toronto is attracting major tenants here, which has the indirect result of pushing out many of the smaller businesses that lend character to any neighbourhood.

Still, to its credit, Waterfront Toronto has focused on welcoming the public. The spot where we walked, formerly a series of parking lots, are becoming wide, car-free promenades that wrap around the south side of the Corus and, east of it, George Brown's new waterfront campus (now a gaping hole in the ground).

We then arrived at a scene of bulldozers, backhoes, form-work for pouring concrete and hundreds of pieces of green reinforcement bar, where workers are shaping the second future park, provisionally called "Sherbourne Park."

The park has a north and south wedge, separated by Queens Quay. Its centrepieces are four cement spikes jutting from the north end, up which will flow treated storm sewer water, which will then cascade down and through a man-made creek bisecting the park, before pouring into Lake Ontario.

On the south side, the "creek" will flow past a large round cement disc: a wading pool in summer, a skating rink in winter.

"I love standing here, because you can imagine the George Brown students skating here at lunch time," Mr. Roche said. He expects the park to open by this autumn.

You can submit your suggestion for a new name for this park at waterfrontoronto.ca.I personally suggest David Miller Park, and I do not mean to be ironic: He deserves some recognition for the time he has given Toronto, and it is on his watch that the transformation of our waterfront is at last building up steam. Just one cautionary note about Sugar Beach: The Corus executive noted that, when you park your car around here, you can end up with a fine coating of sugar from the refinery next door. Lying on the beach may be an interesting experience. As Mr. Pecar says, "You're not going to get a tan. You're going to get a sugar-coating."
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PinkLucy said:
Just one cautionary note about Sugar Beach: The Corus executive noted that, when you park your car around here, you can end up with a fine coating of sugar from the refinery next door. Lying on the beach may be an interesting experience. As Mr. Pecar says, "You're not going to get a tan. You're going to get a sugar-coating."
Click to expand...

He says that like it's a bad thing. ;)
 
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True. I hate materialism.

But realistically, it means more Corus office workers driving their cars out of the area for lunch breaks etc. Compared to the LV area, this area is really going to be TTC unfriendly.
 
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